A conversation in 140 character bites.

I will be participating in a conversation on Hard Science Fiction with Greg Bear and Morgan J. Locke this coming Wednesday from 4-5pm EST. It is the first of Tor Books new SF/f genre-themed, hour-long chat series hosted on Twitter.

What some people may not know is that Morgan J. Locke is a pseudonym for another science fiction author who I have a close relationship with. See if you can figure that one out but I’ll give you a clue:

Morgan J. Locke’s initials backwards are this other author’s initials.

I believe the hashtag will be #torchat

There will be free stuff:

“The chat will be introduced and (loosely) moderated by Tor publicist Justin Golenbock (@jgolenbo), with giveaways of advance copies of upcoming summer SF releases from @TorBooks preceding and following the 4 PM chat.”

Hi, SF&F Reader, and I’m really glad you are interested in more of my work! Sorry to keep you waiting so long for an answer. I am very bad about checking Steve’s blog!

About the byline. Since it had been so long since my last book, my publisher asked me to take a pseudonym. I don’t know if it’s some kind of sympathetic magic or something, but apparently conventional wisdom has it that using a new byline can help a writer kick-start a career that has been quiet for a long time.

We decided to go with a gender-neutral name, as there was some concern that some readers might have an unconscious expectation that hard SF and a woman’s name on the cover don’t go together. (In fact, there’s research to back this up. There’s a really interesting website at Harvard that provides a demo of the implicit association test that scientists have developed to demonstrate unconscious biases of different sorts. Check it out here: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/selectatest.html)

Bylines and pseudonyms are very common, but it has felt strange to me. I haven’t wanted to mislead people. But the more I talk to my fellow writers, the more common I find this phenomenon is. That’s eased my mind a bit.

There was some back and forth as to whether we should make the connection between my two names public, and we came to the conclusion we should. Personally, I’m relieved, as I want people who liked my earlier works to be able to find this new series. I see it as very much in line with the kind of thing I’ve written before. I also don’t want people to mistake my book for a first novel. A fresh start is great, but I don’t want people to feel misled.

So that’s the long and short of it. If you end up reading it, drop by FeralSapient.com and let me know what you think!